Professor Matthew Nava is one of the recipients of the inaugural Scialog: Sustainable Minerals, Metals, and Materials awards, and he has also received an American Chemical Society (ACS) Petroleum Research Fund (PRF) Doctoral New Investigator (DNI) grant.
The Scialog award, funded by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA), the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and The Kavli Foundation, has allocated a total of $66,000 each to six cross-disciplinary teams of early career researchers working to innovate in the fields of mining, material design, and sustainable manufacturing. The Scialog initiative aims to foster collaboration among scientists from diverse disciplines to tackle pressing challenges in creating a low-carbon energy system.
Nava’s project, “Water-Free Silicate Activation for Valuable Metal Extraction,” aims to innovate methods for extracting valuable metals without relying on water, thus aligning with the initiative’s goals of sustainability and resource recovery. This focus on efficient resource management is echoed in the themes discussed at the conference, where keynote speakers emphasized viewing environmental challenges as opportunities for innovation.
Earlier this year, Nava was also awarded a prestigious American Chemical Society (ACS) Petroleum Research Fund (PRF) Doctoral New Investigator (DNI) grant for his proposed research “Discotic ligand platforms as homogeneous models for metal impregnated zeolites.”
Each year, the American Chemical Society’s Petroleum Research Fund holds a highly selective competition to award seed funding to top researchers with a track record of producing innovative fundamental research. Established in 1954, its goal has been to support “advanced scientific education and the careers of scientists, to aid in significantly increasing the world’s energy options.”
This award provides funding of $110,000 over two years and will support Nava’s research on homogeneous models of zeolite active sites.
Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penny@chem.ucla.edu.
